Craig Oliver is unlikely to get any satisfaction from the BBC

The BBC looks like it will not take disciplinary action against any employee
following the leaked footage of Craig Oliver's rant over the reporting of
Jeremy Hunt’s travails.

Craig Oliver is David Cameron’s director of communicationsPhoto: PAUL GROVER

By Tim Walker

7:30AM BST 07 Jun 2012

There was outrage in Downing Street when Craig Oliver, David Cameron’s director of communications, discovered that a private conversation he’d had about bias with Norman Smith, the BBC News Channel’s chief political correspondent, had not merely been filmed without his knowledge, but had also anonymously been put up on YouTube.

A BBC spokesman assured me last week that there would be a “full investigation” into the affair, which, in the words of the Prime Minister’s spokesman, showed the BBC at its “unprofessional” worst. “We cannot say what happened, so we would be grateful if you did not prejudge the outcome of the investigations by saying it must have been a BBC member of staff involved [with posting the footage on YouTube],” a corporation spokesman told me.

At a time when other media organisations are being subjected to unprecedented scrutiny over their standards, particularly in relation to electronic media, the BBC now appears to feel that no more need be said about the embarrassing episode.

I understand the decision has been taken not to take disciplinary action against any employee. “I’m afraid there’s really nothing else to say on this,” a BBC spokesman confirmed yesterday. “As far as I’m aware, it’s still being looked into, but we don’t comment on internal staff matters.”

Oliver had been shown on YouTube telling Smith that he regarded his reporting of Jeremy Hunt’s travails as “partial”.

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